Hong Kong (CNN)January 2015. With an unrestricted, panoramic night view of the city’s twinkling skyline and the breezy air right outside the front door, a 15th floor penthouse apartment ticks all the boxes for a million-dollar property in the heart of Hong Kong.
But there’s a catch.
Fung, 59, who prefers not to divulge his full name, lives in an illegal rooftop slum — a 75-square-feet shack just big enough to host a bed, a cupboard, and everyday knick-knacks thrown pell-mell in the dusty room. The rent costs $1,700 Hong Kong dollars (US$220) a month.

livemint.com. January 2015. Mumbai: Edward Glaeser’s best-selling book Triumph of the City is an ideal starting point for anyone interested in learning about urbanization. The book examines cities across the world and describes why and how “urban spaces make us human”. An economics professor at Harvard University, Glaeser was in New Delhi to speak at the London School of Economics’s Urban Age Conference. On the sidelines of the conference, he spoke about how cities succeed. “I think triumphant is empowering the citizens to make their own choices, enabling them to find economic success and have freedom. Different cities have different dimensions. Singapore is mind-bogglingly well-run, but it can also be a little sterile, and certainly it does not enjoy perfect freedom from every dimension. Rio is a magnificent city but certainly not particularly well-run; it has huge problems of crime. Many Northern European cities are glorious in terms of their combination of prosperity and equality, but they are also not necessarily great at being inclusive to new residents, and can be very expensive. So, I don’t see one triumphant city,” Glaeser explains.

Within a few days we will begin publishing Professional Blindness And Missing The Mark ~ The Historical Analysis Of Four Major Crises During The First Two Decades Of The Republic Of Indonesia. The paperback edition will be available in the beginning of 2015 (EHV Academicpress – Bremen).

This book contains six captivating articles about decisive moments in the first two decennia of the Republic of Indonesia’s existence (1945-1965); one per chapter with an introduction. They were presented at the memorial in honor of Professor dr. Wim Wertheim’s centennial birthday in 2008 – the doyen of post-war Dutch Indonesia research.

Each chapter explores a significant event from that era and was written by experienced researchers – Mary van Delden, Saskia Wieringa, Ben White, Pieter Drooglever and Coen Holtzappel – making use of source material that for the most part has been neglected by previous research. The analyses of the material reveal the new Republic’s struggle to bring together, and keep together, the colonial heritage of the Dutch East Indies in one independent and productive Republic of Indonesia. The foundation of a domestically, across the archipelago, and internationally accepted national government, as well as obedient regional governments and obliging armed forces, were deciding factors in this struggle.

Violent confrontations between armed forces and the communist party PKI took place in 1948 during the Indonesian National Revolution, as well as in 1965 after the Republic had already been independent for 14 years. The dividing issue was the power balance between politics and army top in state, government and land. A rigorous break with the past was made in 1965, which saw the installation of a junta regime under the leadership of General Soeharto that stayed in place for the following 32 years. Democracy had to wait until the army top made sure every part of politics and armed forces was finely adapted to work with the other. Not until then would the clock of government, production and control be fully set.

The articles reveal a blind spot in Western research of Indonesian developments in the discussed period; research that from 1965 onward was further, and permanently, influenced by the Indonesian army’s view. The Cold War raged domestically as well as abroad.

timeshighereducation.co.uk. January 2015. Dutch universities have vowed not to soften their groundbreaking demands for publishers to permit all papers published by their academics to be made open access for no extra charge.
In January last year, Sander Dekker, the Dutch minister for education, culture and science, decreed that 60 per cent of Dutch research articles must be open access by 2019 and 100 per cent by 2024. Dutch university presidents responded by agreeing to make their renewal of subscription deals dependent on publishers taking steps to realise this goal.

Gerard Meijer, president of Radboud University and one of the lead negotiators for the Dutch universities, said that in addition to preserving access to their subscription journals, the universities wanted publishers to permit all future articles whose corresponding author has a Dutch affiliation to be published on an open access basis for no extra charge. He said universities were also unwilling to tolerate any more above-inflation price rises.

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